Group items tagged

facebook fixed the bug that allow users to view the instant message from their friend. Privacy issued rised again for Facebook.

Plurk, a micro-messaging service that competes with Twitter, discovered that it is being blocked in China.

People are taking actions to express their feeling about Facebook privacy issue.

On Thursday April 1st, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) - the Canadian equivalent to the SEC, put forth allegations against Agoracom.com an online investor relations forum for seeding fake conversations throughout their investor message board community. The allegations describe a scenario of more than 24,000 fraudulent posts made by 670 different accounts In the amount of time it took to create all these fake posts and different accounts, maybe they could have done something constructive? People don't seem to realise how much their actions are tracked on the internet. Beyond embarrassing, it's also becoming a grounds for legal action

The government at the Mexican state of Sinaloa will send SMS messages to warn citizens in the event of an earthquake. 

The evershifting sands of media and content. Theoretically, as McLuhan says, the media is the message. Practically speaking, the world is full of examples of companies (Google/Apple) trying to control both the content and the infrastructure and there becoming very little difference between them.

In an effort to disrupt communications and head off huge opposition demonstrations planned for Thursday, the Iranian authorities on Wednesday drastically slowed Internet service in Iran and shut down text messaging services, and an official said that Gmail, the Google e-mail service, would be blocked.

US focus, however amazing to see the article talks to 90% of email being sent is Spam. Organisations need greater controls and security measures for any disgruntled employees.

the complications involved in governance of the internet are underpinned by defining the relations of medium and message.

This article discusses the repercussions and impacts of threatening text messages that resulted in a teen suicide. Although the bully expressed remorse, the tragedy clearly marks how words are simply devastating, even if they seem trivial to others. Prosecution and Cyber bullying laws should examine the severity of the crime, and provide adequate justice.

Even though people are aware that when they tweet it is public record, but most would assume that these tweets were not being documented. Will people censor what they say once they know it is going to be on printed public record?

PJFenwick is doing a PhD on facebook privacy and his explorations have shown that even when you lock up your settings, your friends (and friends of) can leak your information all over the place. "But by far the most interesting part of all of this have been dark users. Like dark matter, these users are not directly observable, usually because they've completely disabled API access. In fact, some of these users are completely dark unless you're a friend. They don't show up in search results. They don't show up on friends' lists. You can't send them messages. If you try to navigate to their user page (assuming you know it exists), you get redirected back to your homepage. These users have their privacy settings turned up real high, and are supposed to be hard to find. However like dark matter, dark users are observable due to their effects on the rest of the universe. If a dark user comments on a stream entry, I can see that comment. More importantly, I can see their user-ID, and I can generate a URL to a page that will contain their name. I can then watch for their activities elsewhere. Granted, I can't directly search for their activity, but I can observe their effects on my friends. For want of a better term, I've been calling this "dark stalking". What makes this all rather chilling is that I'm doing all of this via the application API. If your friend has installed an application, then it can access quite a lot of information about you, unless you turn it off. If your friend has granted the application the read_stream privilege, then it can read your status stream. Even if a friend of a friend has done this, and you comment on your friend's status entries, it's possible to infer your existence and retrieve those discussions through dark stalking."

The text Messages other threat for the Iranian Government. With that decision some leaders from the opposition argue that this decision is the anxiety of public opinion.

And I thought the 'Fusion Powerplant" in Sim City 2000 being a peak accomplishment of the game was enough of a green message. Choose your industry and try to be a 'good' CEO. It seems like a kind of layman's e-learning on social responsibility for managers, or perhaps is the ideal way to train us MTV-generation managers of the future.

The Digital economy Act in all its glory. There was a LOT of debate over this Act. It was introduced by Lord Mandelson of the Labour party, tossed back and forth between houses with amendments that were argued to the minutest detail, then finally spat out for the public to revile. All ISPs are now required to monitor their subscibers use of listed sites and warn them when they enter a site that enables pirating. They must then record every such warning, giving every subscriber a number, then make the list available to the government when they get a warrant to look for excessive downloaders. Only the government like this idea, because it makes their job easier. I wandered onto one of the listed sites recently in my quest to find Dr Who episodes before they aired in Australia. The message was like driving down the highway and suddenly seeing a police car parked on the side of the road. You might know you haven't done anything wrong (yet) but you still get a scare ...

It does not talk about email spam, but SMS spam. It is interesting that email spam is a 5,000,000% bigger problem than SMS spam, and it seems not as big problem as I am annoyed every time when I receive text spam on my mobile. SMS spam is not as big as email spam, but it is getting bigger and actually some companies have been hit with penalties for contravening the Spam Act in Brisbane. I attach the URL for more information on $16m SMS spam fine. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/16m-sms-spam-fine-20091023-hd7t.html

Virgin Mobile marketing team clearly not understanding the Spam Act by sending customers email after they have opted out just to 'make sure you're still certain' about option out! Virgin since fined $22K and have committed to providing training for their staff.

The website was designed by a University of Technology Sydney student named Chris Webster, the website examines the effects and severity of cyberbullying, and offers a wide array of information (types of cyberbullying, Internet safety, mobile phone tips, examples of cyberbullying etc) and surveys on cyberbullying and Internet safety. Cyberbullying causes incredible distress to those who fall victim to it. Cyberbullying does not leave physical scars, however the cruelty of others becomes evident through web pages, social network sites that exist on the Internet, as taunting does not only persist during school hours; but extends to time at home where cruelty is displayed through online text messages, posts, and other outlets that leave an extensive amount of emotional damage.

This article discusses the topics of educators improving their skills on detecting the various forms of cyberbullying, follow-up prevention, and plans that address cyberbullies. It also notes that perhaps, some cyberbullying is not fully realised by the bullies themselves, as children may be unaware of how impactful their messages are. There is also the discussion of a digital divide between children and their parents with respect to how one conducts themselves online. Though, it is doubtful to claim that children are completely ignorant of their own actions on the Internet.

Google blames Chinese-backed groups for attacking blogs of political critics. But who can stop this actions, who has the power to, within the current legal framework, do so?